doom three: two simple words -- the former a noun, or
transitive verb; the latter the third ordinal, or second prime. but together,
they bond to become a powerful concept. one greater than the sum of its parts,
a new world-view paradigm, a religion, a little boy's wish, a grown man's hope,
yet so much more that cannot be said. i cannot wait -- as i write this from the
queue outside my local game shop, my hand trembles; it's cold and the last
eight days here have been lonely at night. i sit here, shaking in anxiety for
the shop to open, feverishly and unconciously tugging at myself through my
ripped pockets, salivating at the thought of buying that precious 27-cd shrink
wrapped bundle of frag-laden joyness. i can no longer feel the pain of hunger
gnawing at me, or my unblinked eyes drying out as mosquito after mosquito lay
filthy eggs on my unmoving door-focused corneas.

once i get my stinking body inside, punching, kicking and gouging all who stand in my way before setting paws on the box, the sweaty, piss soaked bundle of
canadian dollars hurled across the counter, not waiting for the reciept (i will
never return it) i shall then flee home, globs of frosted faeces tumbling down
my trouser legs, to rip the box to shreds as i scamper up the stairs to my
apartment door, barely avoiding slipping to my death on the spattering of
saliva that spews ahead as i gurgle and scream. i spend two days loading cd
after cd of the carmack code mana into my pathetic 40gb drive, uninstalling and
carelessly -- and joyfully -- deleting any important files/documents or windows
dlls that stand in my way until all 18.5gb of its magnificant glory sits
arranged in pretty streams of bytes in the hallowed magnetic media of my
laptop's winchester. i wait, wait and wait some more as the last bit is flipped
from 1 to 0 and xp coughs yet another 32x32 icon onto my disorganized desktop.
i grab my razer viper, impatient fingers biting into the sides of it like a
hawk plucking a salmon from a river -- i slide the mouse smoothly to the icon
and double click... first slowly, then rapidly speeding up, i begin clicking
like some kind of maniacal parkinsons afflicted beta tester, not caring whether
i spawn one or a hundred copies of the executable. i just want to see
something. i can't wait any longer. now.

show me lightmaps dammit.

the cooling fan audibly shifts gears in my athlon xp 2200+ laptop; whining,
whirring like some kind of demented air conditioner and i swear the screen is sweating -- maybe it's excited too? i hear the dulcit squeals
of pain as my motherboard integrated radeon igp 320, radeon 7000 equivalent
video card struggles to preload megabyte after megabyte of 32 bit texture into
the 64mb of shared sdram that it so tenuously controls.

show me dynamic lights, dammit.

i notice a strange smell from somewhere, something new, sharp on the nose, not
at all like the waft of dried urine that sneaks around under the desk; what is
that? as i unconsciously let another flow of hot piss run down my leg -- this
is no time for toilet pleasantries -- i ponder the source of the new acrid
smell, whilst mainly watching the harddrive light flicker, then remain
permanently on. the fan shifts gears once more.

show me trilinear filtering, dammit.

fifteen minutes pass, the smell grows stronger; i imagine in my minds eye, each
cpu clock cycle, 1.8 million times a second, sucking, pumping and routing that
precious bytestream and distributing it to all the hardware that comprises my
sub-1000$ laptop. suddenly, *poof*, the magic blue smoke appears, wispy at
first, then blows rapidly in large plumes from all vents as the cpu fan
generates gusts best measured on the beaufort scale. then, the screen fades
rapidly to a white dot: "oh the suspense!" i squeal to myself with glee.
for a few moments, i congratulate mentally john carmack on managing to coach
directx 9c into such fantastic trickery with the idirectinputeffect interface.
only johnc himself could get such a magnificent atmospheric introduction. real
smoke! then, it hits me. not the reality of the situation, but rather the cpu,
as it bursts through the flimsy laptop casing, keyboard split open, it rises
like a helicopter into the sky as the now 85,000rpm cooling fan propels it at
near light speed to gash my face open like a cheap bic razor in the hands of a
drunk. as i black out from lack of sleep, exhaustion and the rapid loss of
blood, i think just one thought:

doom iii.

ph34r it.